5 tips from an Olympic medalist to get started in morning yoga

Bronze medalist at the Rio Olympics, windsurfer Pierre Lecoq is also a follower of Yoga, a practice he learned during a course of several weeks in the Philippines, last year. He gives us his advice during this period of confinement due to the coronavirus.

1. We can all get started. “There is a misconception that the gesture must be perfect, it's wrong. During the course in which I participated, there were very old people, others were coming out of chemotherapy. Some managed to chain all the series, others not. Certainly not all movements are within everyone's reach, but the goal is to seek joint unlocking through breathing. "

2. We start in the morning. “The best moment is in the morning, without having had a big breakfast. You can have a banana or a tea before a session, because you have to be well hydrated and have a minimum of energy. A session is sometimes intense, there are a lot of movements, we sometimes find ourselves head upside down, so we avoid being in the digestion phase. "

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3. We insist on breathing. “Yoga allows you to detoxify, to sort through your emotions and ideas. It is for me, a meditation in movements with a big work on the breathing, which helps in particular to heat the body. This is a fundamental axis in the practice of yoga and helps to evacuate points of physical as well as psychological tension. At first, we tend to focus on the placement of the feet, hands and back, but gradually the movements become innate and we focus on the breath. "

4. We start slowly. “We can focus on the sun salutation, we repeat 5 times, it lasts about twenty minutes and for people who want to get started it's an excellent base. There is work to be done on breathing, specific positions to learn at the level of the hands, at the level of the feet which are very easily found on YouTube. "

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5. We progress gradually. “I am a fan of the one hour ashtanga sessions. There is a continuity in the movements, we can go gradually, doing only half the session, for example, and insisting on the postures that we can not yet do. There is a really old school reference session by Pattabhi Jois found on the Internet. It gives a very good overview. "

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